I am posting this web page because this project is so much a part of our lives, we both spend a lot of time talking about it.  I think we have lives outside of home construction, but sometimes hard to remember them.  In part, this is because our house is perpetually under construction.

See pix of Durie and Larry in their colorful native gear below.

We moved in this house in Woodstock, IL in July, 1998, and started on it right away.  We got a bargain basement buy, and knew we would need at least 5 years to get the place fixed up.  So far (2005), we have:

• We (i.e. Durie) painted it--it was a charming parrot green when we moved in
• Tore down a dog run and put a 4x30 screen porch along the back of the house off the bedrooms
• Build a vegetable garden, and keep the deer out with two 4' fences set 4' apart (deer can clear an 8' fence, but wont jump a double fence).  The exterior fence is some oak boards salvaged from a horse farm in Barrington
• Many flower and weed gargens (our goal is to have no grass), trees (25 so far)
• Cut a hole in the attic above the bathroom and out in a pull-down staircase and electricity (and immediately stuffed it full of junk)
• Tore out two walls on the ground level to make a "TV rioom"
• Painted the living room
• Put in a small pond (only 17" deep--at 18" you have to call the Army Core of Engineers--in fact, we have, technically, a water garden
• Put in a deep pond (36" deep) so Durie can keep water plants alive in it over the winter
  
• Built a sewing room, workshop, and home office in the basement
• Kitchen: gutted it; tore through the attic to make  a cathedral ceiling; replaced the staircase with a spiral staircase, put in a penninsula, new appliances;  changed from electric to gas stove; ceramic tile floor; tore a hole in the wall to the soon-to-be sunroom; put in 3 skylights
• Added a 10' x 12' cedar screen porch to the east side of the house
• Added a 2-car garage below a 20X20 bedroom
• Sunroom: converted an unheated back porch and old greenhouse to a year-round 18x20 sun room with radiant heat. We call it the Cat Room because with the heatd floor, that where Newt, Nat, Iggy and Mo spend most of their time.
  
• Re-roofed the shed
• Built a runway around the house